“Possibly,” assented Mrs. Vansittart. “Do you take sugar, Miss Roden?”
“Yes, please—seriously. Two pieces.”
“Are you like Joan?” asked Cornish, as he gave her the cup. “Do you take anything else seriously?”
“Oh no,” answered Dorothy Roden, with a laugh.
“And your brother?” inquired Mrs. Vansittart. “Is he coming this afternoon?”
“He will follow me. He is busy with the new malgamiters who arrived this morning. I suppose you brought them, Mr. Cornish?”
“Yes, I brought them. Twenty-four of them—the dregs, so to speak. The very last of the malgamiters, collected from all parts of the world. I was not proud of them.”
He sat down and quickly changed the conversation, showing quite clearly that this subject interested him as little as it interested his companions. He brought the latest news from London, which the ladies were glad enough to hear. For to Dorothy Roden, at least, The Hague was a place of exile, where men lived different lives and women thought different thoughts. Are there not a hundred little rivulets of news which never flow through the journals, but are passed from mouth to mouth, and seem shallow enough, but which, uniting at last, form a great stream of public opinion, and this, having formed itself imperceptibly, is suddenly found in full flow, and is so obvious that the newspapers forget to mention it? Thus colonists and other exiles returning to England, and priding themselves upon having kept in touch with the progress of events and ideas in the old country, find that their thoughts have all the while been running in the wrong channels—that seemingly great events have been considered very small, that small ideas have been lifted high by the babbling crowd which is vaguely called society.
From Tony Cornish, Mrs. Vansittart and Dorothy learnt that among other
social playthings charity was for the moment being laid aside. We have
inherited, it appears, a great box of playthings, and the careful
student of history will find that none of the toys are new—that they
have indeed been played with by our forefathers, who did just as we do.
They took each toy from the box, and cried aloud that it was new, that
the world had never seen its like before. Had it not, indeed? Then
presently the toy—be it charity, or a new religion, or sentiment, or
greed of gain, or war—is thrown back into the box again, where it lies
until we of a later day drag it forth with the same cry that it is new.
We grow wild with excitement over South African mines, and never
recognize the old South Sea bubble trimmed anew to suit the taste of
the day. We crow with delight over our East End slums, and never
recognize the patched-up remnants of the last Crusade that fizzled out
so ignominiously at Acre five hundred years ago.
So Tony Cornish, who was dans le movement gently intimated to his hearers that what may be called a robuster tone ruled the spirit of the age. Charity was going down, athletics were coming up. Another Olympiad had passed away. Wise indeed was Solon, who allowed four years for men to soften and to harden again. During the Olympiads it is to be presumed that men busied themselves with the slums that existed in those days, hearkened to the decadent poetry or fiction of that time, and then, as the robuster period of the games came round, braced themselves once more to the consideration of braver things.